DuoLingo

"Dad, we're doing DuoLingo," Elliot told me.  "Anna started on it and she is learning Spanish, but I've started too."

"Really," I said.  "What language are you learning?"

"Chinese!"  Elliot told me proudly.

"Mandarin or Cantonese?"  I asked my seven year old son.

"What?"  He said.

"Never mind," I replied.  "Have you learned any yet?"

"Ni Hao!"  He said.  "That means hello.  And I learned 'Wah' too, but I am not totally sure what it means."

"I guess it will be handy to know Chinese," I said.

"Yes," Elliot said.  "I'll just start talking to Chinese people in Chinese and they will be so surprised that I know it.  Once I finish learning Chinese then I'm going to start on Japanese.  I'll have to decide what other languages to learn after that."

I didn't really know what to say.  My experience is that it takes a while to learn new languages -- even if you have an amazing app that speeds the process.  I've lived long enough to know that many things are harder than they seem.

At the same time, it is awfully easy to shoot down the plans of others as not reality based.

Norman Vincent Peale said "Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you will land among the stars."  Of course, this is a crazy quote.  First of all, the magnitude of difference in distance between the moon and the stars is phenomenal.  Beyond that, the stars are actually farther away than the moon.  If you fall short of the moon, you are more likely to end up some where in orbit around the earth rather than close to Alpha Centauri.  It is like saying shoot for London because even if you miss, you  might end up on Neptune.

The point that Mr. Peale was trying to make was that we should set our sights high.  It is generally a bigger problem that we set their sights too low than that we aim too high.  As we get older, we see our limits far more easily than our abilities.

We need to encourage others to attempt great things, even if maybe they seem beyond their abilities.  You may be surprised at the things they can do.  You may be surprised at the things that you can do once you try.

The Loving Thing to Do

I was emptying the dishwasher.  There seemed to be a lot more items in it than usual.

Very carefully I stacked the big plates, followed by some smaller plates.  Then, I put some bowls on top of that and then topped it with some cups.  The stack was huge, but I was determined to carry it to where it went all at once.  I picked them up and shuffled towards the cabinet where they were kept.

Suddenly, I caught my toe on some unseen crack in the floor.  I tried to catch my balance, but it was too late...

Crash!

I opened my eyes.  I was lying in bed with not a plate to be seen around me.

Bang!

My beautiful wife seemed to be doing something very noisy with a fly swatter.  I looked at my alarm clock.  It was 11:15 pm.

"What are you doing?"  I asked Elaine.

"There were some very noisy flies in our room," she said.  "They were keeping me awake."  Bang!  "Got one!"  She said triumphantly.

Now, to be honest, I hadn't noticed the sound of the flies at all, but I sure did notice the noise produced by the fly swatter.

There is a verse in I Corinthians 13 that says "Charity suffers long and is kind..." 

Maybe I was being long suffering as I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but probably not.  The loving thing to do would have been to arise and help my wife wage war on the house flies.

I suppose there are times that loving thing is just to do nothing, but far more often the loving thing to do is to try to meet the seen need.  Even such a need as trying to kill house flies on a sleep Saturday evening.

The Water of Life

"I can't drink water," the lady told me dramatically.  "I never could."

"Really?"  I asked, a bit puzzled.  I've heard of many allergies, but never one to water.  Our bodies are about 70 percent water.  It is hard to imagine how anyone could survive without water.  "What do you drink?"  I asked her.

"Mostly diet sodas," she told me.  "And occasionally some sweet tea."

"Hmm," I paused for effect.  "I wonder what the main ingredient of those drinks is?"

"Of course, they have water in them," she said.  "I guess I should say that I like my water flavored."

It reminds me of a meme that I saw recently that said something like "I like eggs...  In cake."

During Jesus' ministry He use a lot of different metaphors to explain the Gospel.  One day, as He was talking to a thirsty Samaritan woman, He told her "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water."

The Samaritan woman didn't understand a lot about Jesus' message, but she did understand water.  The people in Jesus' day didn't drink soft drinks and sweet tea.  They drank water and maybe for special occasions some grape juice or wine, but probably most of them couldn't afford anything other than water.  Once or twice a day they made a journey to the well in their community to fill large pots with water.  If they skipped that trip often enough, they would die.

Water was (and is) necessary for life.  Jesus' message is just as necessary.

I am afraid that these days people want to mix the living water with other things.  They want to "flavor it" to make it acceptable to the modern palate.  But what we need is the living water, the message of Jesus Christ -- nothing more or less.

No one ever died due to lack of carbonation or cola flavorings, but plenty of people have died from lack of water, particularly the water of life.

A Faulty Messenger

"Vince, please do not talk with your mouth full!"  Anna said in a pleading voice.

"Anna," Vince said, with his mouth still pretty packed with tater tot casserole.  "Why do you have to be so bossy?"

"Because it looks so disgusting,"  Anna said.

"That's not an answer,"  Vince said.

I suppose that both of my children have their points.  It is pretty disgusting when someone insists on speaking with their mouth full.  There is a reason that most opportunities for oration do not take place in a Golden Corral.  On the other hand, it I probably discouraging when your older sister frequently tells you what to do.

Matthew 7 tells us to remove the log from our own eye before attempting to assist our brother with washing the speck out of his.  I guess for me, the bigger question is what to do when we are in the position of the brother being criticized (particularly when we can clearly see the log in the one doing the criticism's eye).

It is easy to focus on my brother's faults and choose to ignore the advice he has given, but that feels like exactly the wrong thing to do.  Regardless of the issues my brother has, I must listen to his admonition and hear the truth in it if I wish to grow.

Shooting the messenger only destroys the channel by which the message arrives.  Similar, maybe, to throwing your cell phone in the ocean when you hear bad news on it.

Some day, I hope that both of my children learn to deal with their faults -- talking with food in their mouth and bossiness, among others.  That growth will come faster if they learn to listen to less than perfect messengers (and even, sometimes, their siblings).